Monday, October 12, 2009

Dear Reader,It’s that time of year. No, not the holidays, jeez, as if any seniors have time to celebrate. (This isn’t a family Holiday Card, you know.) It’s COLLEGE APPLICATION TIME! I am turning all of mine in on the 23. Of this month. October. Period. The End. I won’t ever look back again. I will send them in, and just like that, all my preparation will be over. After that Fate will be Out of My Hands and into the Hands of Perfect Strangers.I don’t like not being in control.But while I am still in control of this whole mess of a process I have a plan.Thank God and Jesus and Allah and the Wind God or whom ever for plans.My plan is called: Operation October. And it goes like this

-Week One: Teacher Recommendations.Status: CHECK MARK COMPLETED

-Week Two: College Essay. Start Filling In Apps.Status: Facing It Head On From The Corner It Backed Me In To

It’s Week Two. That means: The Essay. The Essay About Me. The Essay That Will Determine My Future.This begs the question: What on earth shall I write about?My English teacher says we need to be ourselves. Yes, well what if myself doesn’t exactly believe in proper grammar? My Counselor says I need to write about my life. Yes, well what if my ENTIRE life doesn’t exactly fit into a neat and tidy essay?

I’d adore you forever if you gave me some ideas.Love,A desperate ElleBee.

Last week, during Coffee Hour at my church, my friend, “Gray” was having a conversation with his mother. It’s our ritual that every Sunday, after church, Gray and I always grab a cup of coffee and leave Coffee Hour to sit in a little room with overstuffed chairs and talk about our week. If one of us is busy, the other gets the coffee. One black and one with too much cream and sugar, hilariously called Candy Coffee, only imagine saying Candy Coffee and pretending you are a sketchy guy leaning out of a van and going, “HEY! You wan’ some candyyyy?” Do you now see the humor? Maybe not.Anyway, as per usual, I went for the coffee, but when I got to the coffee station, I found a serious flaw in the routine: they only had decaf.Decaf? What was I supposed to do with decaf?Gray and I are just as busy as the next teen, and you would never ask the average teen to go off and do something without first giving them a proper morning jolt. Without a cup of steaming hot candy-coffee, I am useless.I can’t go out and write that essay that’s due third period.I can’t go forth and command an entire corps of overly excited JROTC kids.I can’t even stop drooling on my desk long enough to explain to my teacher there was a lack of caffeine in my morning.Okay, well maybe I’m not that bad. But it can be pretty serious sometimes.So, I went back to Gray.“Um. Oh, hey there, erm, uh, bud. What’s, ah, going on with your mum?” Gray stared at me like I was a complete fool. Which, lets be honest here, I did sound like, so you can’t blame him.“Nothing really. Is something wrong? Did you, like, hit your head when you were getting coffee… hey, where is the coffee?”Imagine me smiling my biggest smile and putting on my best impression of a saint, so I could break the news of the devastating tragedies at church to him in the kindest way I could think of.“Would you like decaf?”Imagine that deer in the headlights look. Yes, that one. Only now make your imaginary deer friend having a huge personal crisis and perhaps trying not to cry.

Fact of the matter is coffee makes people better, kinder, more enthusiastic people as a general rule. So, a reminder to all those parent-like types out there, and especially the people in charge of Coffee Hours:

A life will be in ruin, if it’s not brewin’, so don’t be hated make caffeinated!

About Me

I am a thirty year old woman stuck in a teenagers body stuck in high school. Perhaps. I'm usually on the right side of the road called confusion hitch hiking along. If you know what I mean, which it is entirely possible that you don't. But I suppose that is how one would go about describing oneself in a nutshell, or in this case, a box.